Scientists have long touted carbon nanotubes as a futuristic means of delivering drugs, fortifying brittle materials and conducting current in miniaturized circuits. But attempts to introduce actual nanotubes into these roles have often been stopped in their tracks by the slender filaments’ stubborn and unhelpful tendency to clump together in solution.

Now scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have found that a readily available chemical, a surfactant called sodium dodecylbenzen

Sopow and colleagues report in the February issue of Ecology Letters that a chemical stimulus from a galling insect changes the morphology and physiology of its host to benefit these specialized plant feeders.

Galls are atypical plant growths that provide nourishment and shelter for gall-inducing insects. Previous studies could not determine whether insect galls are induced by mechanical or chemical stimuli because gall formation occurred at the sites where the insects were active.

Whilst experimenting with nanospheres and perfluorodecalin, a liquid used in the production of synthetic blood, researchers at Germany’s University of Ulm have stumbled across a phenomenon that could ultimately help remove ozone-harming chemicals from the atmosphere. The perfluorodecalin, against all expectations, was taken up by a water-based suspension of 60 nm diameter polystyrene particles.

The scientists believe that this occurred because nanoscopic perfluorodecalin droplets became

Data gathered by Penn State engineers in a volunteer effort at the World Trade Center tragedy, suggests that simple, inexpensive microphones dropped into the rubble of a collapsed building may be able to aid search and rescue teams despite ground level noise.

Dr. Thomas B. Gabrielson, associate professor of acoustics and senior research associate at Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, says, “In conventional survivor searches, noise generating activities at the surface must be stopped

New research published in Genome Biology investigates genes that increase the life span of fruit flies in an effort to gain a greater understanding of the ageing process. The researchers from the University of Southern California and Harvard Medical School screened 10,000 fruit fly populations that were mutated.

Their results revealed that six populations of mutant flies lived 5-17% longer than normal. Furthermore, analysis of these long-lived flies showed that the extended life span

Penn State engineers have developed a low- cost, high-torque rotary motor, based on “smart” materials, that can be configured in a wide range of formats, including one as flat and thin as a CD case.

The inventors say that, in the flat format, the motor could be used to drive changes in the camber of airplane wings or fins, essentially shape-shifting the curvature of the wing or fin surface.

In other formats, the motor could work in tightly integrated spaces where other motors can